In the sometimes fractious world of Canadian environmentalism, few are as vilified as Dr. Patrick Moore.

At one time a ragged, rugged activist who helped lead Greenpeace in the 1970s, he later left the movement, slamming his former colleagues on the way out and championing enemy causes such as genetically modified food, fish farming, and most vocally, nuclear energy. The Vancouver scientist became known as the “Eco-Judas.”

While his turncoat gospel is known to some Canadians, it has recently gained him notoriety beyond these borders. Beginning with his appearance last year in the British documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle – the eco-skeptic’s riposte to An Inconvenient Truth – Dr. Moore’s green-bashing act is heating up in the United States.

As the expensive thirst for oil grows and the debate over a “nuclear renaissance” intensifies, Dr. Moore is experiencing his own revival. As the chair of Greenspirit, his B.C.-based consultancy, the 61-year-old with a PhD in ecology has become nuclear energy’s go-to spokesman in Washington, D.C., where he and former Environmental Protection Agency head Christine Todd Whitman lead Casenergy Coalition — a lobby group to which former Florida governor and presidential brother Jeb Bush is a member.

While mocking his former comrades as purveyors of what he calls “pop environmentalism,” he touts the power of fission.

Nuclear energy remains controversial because of its radioactive waste, potential fallout issues, projected cost overruns and security concerns such as vulnerability to terrorism attacks. Still, the Bush administration has frequently supported nuclear energy as a cleaner alternative to oil and coal, which are considered dirty and expensive.

As Dr. Moore’s supportive op-eds pop up in newspapers across the country, foes depict him as a well-greased “greenwasher,” a spokesman who abuses his Greenpeace bona fides to give enviro-legitimacy to corporations.

“Every time he opens his mouth, the first thing he mentions is Greenpeace,” said Jim Riccio, nuclear-policy analyst in that organization’s U.S. chapter. “He keeps on cropping up wherever the government wants a reactor. He goes in there to greenwash for the industry whenever they want to build.”

His omnipresence has been duly noted elsewhere. Newsweek’s April 21 issue featured him in a Q & A with its resident philosopher Fareed Zakaria. On Earth Day, he wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal justifying his departure from Greenpeace, and the same week, the left-leaning magazine The Nation placed him at the nexus of nuclear advocacy, ridiculing him as “the former Greenpeace co-founder turned corporate shill.”

The May issue of the liberal magazine Mother Jones, however, was perhaps the most critical, depicting him as a Pinot Grigio-sipping, atom-peddling sharpie. “Patrick Moore sits in a dark mahogany booth at the Off the Record bar across from the White House,” begins the article’s author, Justine Sharrock. “Clad in a conservative navy suit, he blends comfortably with the crowd of lobbyists and politicians — a far cry from his former identity as a scruffy-faced Greenpeace leader battling nuclear power.”

“When you’re next to the White House, it is sort of respectful to dress the part,” said Dr. Moore in a telephone interview, adding that Ms. Sharrock, “was nicely dressed herself.”

He also added that Pinot Grigio was hardly a top-shelf wine. “It was not as if it were a Pouilly Fuissé.”

In essence, he insisted, the article had nothing new to report.

Some members of the U.S. and Canadian environmental communities would agree. The new criticisms echo the old ones: he’s a flip-flopper and a sellout. The geography, however, has changed.

In the United States, many experts say there is a greater reliance on “dirty” energy sources such as coal and oil than in Canada, raising the stakes to the south: there are an estimated nine applications out to build nuclear plants, making his role all the more pivotal and public.

As a result, many new allegations dog him: he fails to disclose his lobbying ties in his myriad op-ed columns; he’s in it for the attractive dollars of K Street, the lobbyist’s corridor of clout in the capital. “I could be a carpenter, but I’ve got to make money,” he said. “I’d rather do it with the issues I truly believe in.”

As for the lack of disclosure, he said that he could not help what credentials editors chose or dropped from the bottom of his opinion pieces.

Unflappable in the face of criticism, he is also unyielding towards his antagonists.

Often portrayed as “the Luke Skywalker who became Darth Vader,” “speaking more for his own bottom line than intellectual rigour,” Dr. Moore is equally unsparing in his depiction of Greenpeace, which he thinks has veered too far from its scientific moorings. “You don’t need a lot of education to know that we need to save the last whale,” he said.

In the early 1970s, Dr. Moore, whose family was in the logging business, helped found Greenpeace and aided in planning its first protest, a boat trip to protest nuclear testing in the Aleutian Islands.

For 15 years he participated in the movement’s showboating environmental tactics, campaigning against nuclear testing, whaling, seal hunting, uranium mining and toxic waste dumping. As one of its national -- and then international -- leaders, he became one of its most public faces, rallying against the dark forces of waste and wanton destruction.

By the mid-1980s, the non-profit group established itself as the globe’s ecological enfant terrible, with offices in almost two dozen countries and an annual income of more than $100-million in donations and grants. It was around then that Dr. Moore had second thoughts.

In 1986, he abruptly left the environmental movement -- or as some retorted, it left him by voting him out. “At one point -- I think it was in England -- we were talking about science and I realized that not one of [the directors] were scientists,” he recalled. “We were taking on chemistry issues like dioxin and chlorine.”

Dr. Moore said when his fellow directors wanted a worldwide ban on chlorine, he wanted out. “How could you ban chlorine? It’s an element,” he said. “You can’t ban an element.”

More than two decades later, he said, the old battles are still being fought.

His former colleagues are trying to ban him from a crucial document from its history: His name has been removed from the official crew list of Greenpeace’s maiden voyage.

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